


The Watcher

by pesha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:18:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pesha/pseuds/pesha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albus knows his place in his family's life. He's the one who watches. He's the one who keeps them safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Watcher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/gifts).



Observation was the key to learning. One could learn many, many things through the act of careful observation. The way a person walked, talked, all their mannerisms, the ticks that made them an individual, everything could be learned in a manner of days if one watched closely enough. Few had the kind of dedication it required to learn all that there was to be known of a person through nothing more than _watching_ though. 

That was the kind of obsession to detail that came along rarely in the sane.

Albus Severus Potter had always been obsessive and he was---relatively sane. 

Sanity was a relative concept as far as he was concerned. Many so-called 'normal' people performed actions that he found utterly incomprehensible. For example, he had never understood how anyone could go home with a total stranger and then _stay the night_ with them. What kind of person thought it was safe to sleep in the presence of an unknown? Albus had enough issues sleeping around people he _knew_. It was pure idiocy to allow oneself to be that vulnerable with a total stranger. 

Sleep was an oddity for Albus. It always had been. He had spent most of his nights virtually sleepless as a child because he'd been too busy watching his father. 

Harry Potter was a hero. People watched him everywhere he went. His was the most well-known face in the Wizarding World; people of all ages could recognize him from nothing more than a glance. There were no easy excursions with Albus's father along. They inevitably had to stop to talk to people, take pictures, sometimes people even asked if Harry would sign things for them as if he were some sort of Muggle film star, and Albus had been all too aware that some of the people noticing his father weren't doing it because they were _pleased_ with him.

No one became a hero without having an enemy to fight. 

Albus had watched his home, every window, every door, every sleeping person in his family while he himself could not sleep. There had been no reason for him to lie in bed uselessly when he could be up to watch over his family. He had been comforted by their even breathing and the knowledge that no one other than himself was watching any of them. 

It had been while watching his family in the dark that Albus had first found out that he was one of the few who didn't need any cloak to ensure that he was invisible. 

Watching was easier than being watched. 

_Correction_ , Albus thought, _Watching used to be easier than being watched._

His family had evolved over the years to where now his father was left alone when he traveled through their world, his brother was the one that people noticed for his good looks and charm, and his sister was too old to be a child yet would always seem too young to be a woman to Albus. Work for the Ministry kept Albus busy more often than his father would prefer yet they both knew that it was for the best. Someone had to do the work that he did. Dark magic couldn't be allowed to flourish uncontested. That was the road which led to ruin. 

Watching Lily Luna with her suitor proved easier than it should have been. She didn't seem to notice that he was there which left Albus feeling conflicted. On the one hand, he was pleased that his skills kept him undetectable to even his closest family; on the other, Albus wanted to strangle his baby sister for being so unaware of her surroundings that a spy could trail her for three hours without being any the wiser for it. 

She looked like their mother when she laughed at her date's jokes.

It had been a long time since Albus had thought of his mother. They weren't close. Ginny had never quite seemed to understand how to communicate with Albus. He had been an odd child, too serious, too quiet, always _watching_. Her attention always tended to drift to James -who was constantly trying to keep all eyes on himself- or to Lily Luna whose sweet nature made them all worry at what could happen to her if she attracted the wrong sorts to herself. 

Her Slytherin son with his books and his silence and his staring had never really found his way into her good graces.

Lily Luna did look considerably like her as she laughed though and that made Albus wonder if he could be seeing the equivalent of the start of his parents' relationship. Did his mother laugh that way at his father's jokes? Albus had always found Harry amusing. He had the oddest way of telling a story to where he never seemed to be the star yet the story was all about him at the same time. It was the most unusual form of self-deprecation Albus had ever witnessed; he considered it a hold-over from the abuse that his father had suffered at the hands of the Dursleys who had raised him. 

People could be cruel in ways that defied explanation. They could hurt one another in ways that had nothing to do with magic. Albus worked as an Unspeakable and he was granted special permissions through the Ministry to do "whatever was necessary" to alleviate the threat of Dark magic being used in the world. He had seen things so atrocious that Muggles didn't have words to describe them. He had also seen things done by Muggles to those of the Wizarding World which would have turned the stomach of an ordinary person. 

Albus had never been ordinary. He'd always been too busy watching the lives of others to become concerned about how he lacked a life for himself. 

The man held the door for LilyLu with his head slightly ducked, his cheeks flushed slightly as she brushed past him to enter the restaurant, and Albus could practically feel his discomfort from where he was observing the pair. 

It was sweet.

They were sweet. The pair of them on their date, two people simply spending an evening together, neither of them overly aware that they were being followed by a wizard who had done things in the name of the Ministry which ought to have earned him a lifetime in Dementor-era Azkaban---that was terribly sweet. 

He watched the settle into a table, the fellow holding out LilyLu's chair for her before taking his own seat, and then stepped away to vanish back into the crowd of those who were all going on about their own lives. 

There wasn't any danger from that man for his sister. Albus was sure of it. He would tell his father. It would ease his mind to know that their LilyLu was safe and, even better than that, happy. Harry hadn't asked him to check in on her, probably wouldn't have even thought to ask. 

Albus had gone to look in on her because that was what he did. He looked in on his family. He was their watcher. 

Watching kept him safe in the field for the Ministry; it protected his family.

That was all that mattered.


End file.
